A Thorn In Paradise. CATHY WILLIAMS

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remained conspicuous by its absence, and she could have screamed in frustration as she lay down under the quilt and tried to court sleep. It was a long time coming, though. Her head was too full of images of Antonio Silver.

      The following morning she got up and all those images which had seared her mind the previous night rushed back to her in sickening detail.

      It was not a great way to start the day. For the past few months, after she had become accustomed to living in Deanbridge House, she had awakened slowly and contentedly, never failing to be charmed by the mintgreen luxury of the bedroom with its heavy drapes cascading to the floor, the exquisite pieces of furniture, the cool softness of the beige-coloured carpet underfoot.

      This morning she found herself not giving a moment’s thought to her surroundings and she made herself slow down. This man, she decided, was not going to get under her skin again. He had managed that the night before because he had caught her unawares, when she was tired and vulnerable and unable to defend herself, but today he would find himself facing an altogether different cup of tea.

      She took her time dressing, brushing her long hair carefully and knotting it behind her head in a chignon, by far the most practical hairstyle for her. She never wore a nurse’s uniform, having been informed by Benjamin on day one that he wouldn’t tolerate her clumping around in heavy shoes and a starchy white frock, but she always made sure that she dressed smartly. Never trousers and never shorts, despite the fact that it was quite hot at the moment. She had a good supply of sober, unfussy skirts and blouses and she extracted an oatmeal skirt from the wardrobe and a crisp, beige short-sleeved shirt, then looked at her reflection in the mirror.

      Nothing, she acknowledged realistically, to write home about. She supposed she wasn’t bad-looking in an average sort of way, but for the first time since she had started working for Benjamin she realised that her wardrobe didn’t do a great deal for her. With her fair complexion she needed to wear things that were dramatic, that put colour in her cheeks, instead of a selection of background outfits that made her appear drained.

      How was it that she was only now noticing this trait? Mousy. That was what he had called her. Had she cultivated this drabness as a subconscious reaction to her mother? It seemed likely, and she felt an unexpected anger that circumstances could mould a person so completely. Her parents’ divorce had been a background tune playing in the back of her mind for as long as she could remember. Too long.

      On the spur of the moment she added a touch of blusher to her cheeks and then frowned impatiently at herself.

      Would Benjamin have been notified of Antonio’s presence? she wondered, as she walked briskly down the corridor towards his bedroom. She had deliberately taken her time this morning because she didn’t want to appear over-keen to find out, but she was dying of curiosity.

      As soon as she entered the bedroom she was aware that he had already heard the bad news. The curtains had not been drawn back, and that was usually the first thing he did in the morning, and the room was in darkness. He was lying on the bed and she approached him tentatively.

      ‘Good morning, Benjamin,’ she said brightly, moving to pull the curtains, and he said in a woebegone voice,

      ‘Why bother? I won’t be getting out of bed this morning.’

      She ignored that and drew back the curtains, letting in a flood of early morning sunshine.

      ‘Come along,’ she said with a beaming smile, and he glared at her.

      ‘And you can stop being chirpy. That—that son of mine has dared to cross the threshold of this house!’ The woebegone expression was beginning to lift and some of his ranting energies were back in place.

      ‘I know,’ Corinna said quietly, tidying up the room, even though one of the girls would later be coming in to clean.

      ‘You know!’ he roared. ‘You know and you didn’t even tell me?’

      ‘He arrived very late last night,’ she said, trying not to let her memory of that disastrous encounter show on her face. ‘Just as I was about to retire for the evening, in fact.’

      ‘Typical!’ Benjamin roared with some of his usual fire. ‘Typical! Never spares so much as a passing thought to anyone else! Typical!’

      ‘And how do you find out about his arrival?’ She busied herself stacking his books into a neat pile on the long, low table by the window.

      ‘Edna. Trooping up here at the crack of dawn to break the happy news! Damned woman thought that I’d be delighted, even though I’ve spent years making it perfectly clear how I felt about him! What a fool! Ruined my day, of course. I couldn’t touch a mouthful of my breakfast, and I’m certainly not coming downstairs. Not until he’s well and truly out of the place!’

      He glared at her aggressively and she tried to give him a soothing, professional smile.

      ‘He doesn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to leave,’ she said, choosing her words carefully, and he shot her a baleful look.

      ‘He’ll be in a hurry,’ Benjamin said, flapping his arms about and looking quite comical. ‘Oh, he’ll be in a hurry when I set the dogs—the—Edna—the police on him!’

      Personally Corinna didn’t think that the police would feel much inclined to storm the place and capture Antonio Silver by force simply because his father didn’t want him around, but she refrained from saying anything.

      ‘You can’t stay in bed all day,’ she pointed out reasonably. ‘You’ll be bored stiff in under an hour. Besides, I may take you for walks in your wheelchair, but you know that you need to exercise your limbs by walking around the house. You know what the doctor said——’

      ‘I refuse to budge. I don’t care what you or that quack of a doctor says.’

      ‘Dr Harman isn’t a quack, in fact, he’s noted——’

      ‘Noted, boted,’ Benjamin cut in with rising irritation. ‘I’m not budging. Though why I should be a prisoner in my own home I fail to understand. This is my home, dammit! How dare he walk in here and shut me up in my bedroom? You’ll have to get him out!’

      ‘What, me?’ She stopped what she was doing and then looked wryly at him as he gave her a sly smile.

      ‘So, I see he’s got to you, has he? What did you think of him, then?’

      ‘If you must know,’ she said calmly, ‘I thought he was overbearing, arrogant and unpleasant.’

      ‘But good-looking, eh? He used to be damned fine-looking when I last saw him. What does he look like now?’ He glanced down at his gnarled fingers and then clasped them on his lap, continuing to peer at them with overdone fascination.

      ‘Passable,’ Corinna said. She extracted some clothes from his wardrobe and laid them out on the bed. Grey flannel trousers, a pale blue long-sleeved shirt because Benjamin had no time for short-sleeved shirts, whatever the weather, a pair of charcoal-grey socks.

      She could feel her heart step up a beat as she remembered Antonio Silver’s formidable physical impact. In the cold light of day he was probably nowhere as overwhelming as he had appeared the night before, but she still couldn’t prevent the tell-tale flush of colour on her cheeks.

      Benjamin, though, wasn’t looking at her.

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